


Stolen Treats in Secret Rooms

by Deannie



Series: The Tascosa Saga [3]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Mind Manipulation, Supermagnificent AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 04:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9160027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: Hal Marconi lived in his head. He built houses there, doors upon doors. He never lost his temper, never resorted to violence, never was sure he even felt much in the way of happy or sad, on the outside, anyway. Hal lived well in his head. And when he got good enough at that, he found out he could live in other people’s heads, too.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the hc_bingo prompt theft.

Harold Marconi started life as the pathetic runt of what became a too-large litter. He’d been born early, shrunken, pitiful. His younger siblings (and there were many) outstripped him easily, growing strong and tall, and most of them handsome.

In her darker moments, his mother would confide in him the fact that she’d expected him to die by two. She’d even hoped it. He was little help around the farm, after all. Dogged as he was, he simply wasn’t the burly child who could work for long hours.

Not that Hal had any desire to. No, Hal wasn’t made for menial labor. He lived in his head. He built houses there, doors upon doors, all leading to little bits and pieces of the truth that made up Harold Marconi. He never lost his temper, never resorted to violence, never was sure he even felt much in the way of happy or sad, on the outside, anyway. He never had to. All his feelings were tight and clean and safe behind their doors. Hal lived well in his head.

And when he got good enough at that, he found out he could live in other people’s heads, too.

When he was sixteen, his fourteen-year-old sister Beulah gave out to him for his laziness, his books, his basic worthlessness.

“You’re no good to Momma and Pa anyway, Harry,” Beulah told him in no uncertain terms. “Sometimes I wish they’d’ve just drowned you when you were little, like that runt of a kitten Momma found last week.”

Hal had stared at her, a considered retort waiting on his tongue—when suddenly a door opened, somewhere in what he thought was his own head. He had many doors in there, after all, it was understandable that he’d think it was there.

But behind that door sat a scared little girl in tears. Beulah, crying over a stack of books whose pages carried symbols incomprehensible and dizzying.

“You’re just jealous because you can’t read at all,” he said quietly, watching the girl in the physical world and the girl behind the door both glare at him in horror.

“I can too, Harold Marconi!” his physical sister yelled, slamming a hand hard into his chest. “You take that back!”

But there was no reason to. It was true. Their father, ignorant though he was, demanded that his children learn to read, as he hadn’t. Beulah had always sat and dutifully done her studies, but she was mostly illiterate. Hal knew that secret now.

And he wanted to know more. He’d never really wanted anything before. Not like this. It was as if he’d found a real truth about himself that he’d been missing. Aroused, he explored further.

There were other doors, there in Beulah's mind, hallways of them, complex and ranging and Hal had always known his own mind was huge, but he hadn’t understood that everyone’s was. He thought it was just him.

He pushed at a door that glowed with… some light he couldn’t name. Beulah gasped and Hal blinked at her, surprised to see a reaction. And then he pushed again. Beulah put a hand to her head as if it hurt her physically, and Hal felt a thrill go through him. There was something here worth knowing...

Hal put his mental shoulder to the door and shoved as hard as he could, and Beulah's scream of pain was short and quiet. She stood frozen in the shadows of the barn, and the door in her mind stood open.

Beyond the door, she lay in the grass, yellow dress lifted to show the creamy skin that should have been covered by her knickers, while Jurgen Maatharsson from down by the creek kneeled between her legs and did things with his tongue, and then his fingers, and then he unbuttoned his pants and—

The stinging slap of his sister’s hand on his face slammed the door in her mind, and Hal looked at her in surprise.

“What did you do?” she whispered, horrified, looking at him as if he were the devil himself. “What did you  _ do _ , Harry!?”

“It’s more what you did, isn’t it, Beulah?” he replied evenly. The taste of her memory was still rich in his mind, and he smiled and forced the door open again, hard enough to make her stagger. He  _ liked this _ .

He wanted to see  _ everything _ .

Jurgen was seventeen, big for his age, and he rocked in and out of Beulah like a rutting pig Hal had once seen taking a sow in heat. Beulah's head was thrown back and she giggled in pain and wonder. 

“Harry, please,” he heard her whimper in the here and now, a worry in her voice that made another door call to him. Harry left her to her sex in the meadow and moved on.

“Harry…”

The next door was more a curtain, gaussy and easily torn as he cast it aside. Beulah sobbed, near-silent and agonized, and Hal ignored it. 

She hadn’t bled in three months. She’d be showing soon. Hal smiled and heard Beulah begin to cry, though he kept his vision focused on the uncertain and terrified her in her mind. 

Beulah was pregnant. The secret and its pain brought him a jolt of energy that was sexual and visceral and perfect.

Their parents would kill her, and Jurgen, too, when they found out. Hal walked away from the crying girl in his sister’s head, returning to the couple in the grass who had made her cry in the first place. He didn’t hate his sister—he didn’t necessarily want her to leave, or worse. But the truth was that she’d been fucking the Norseman down the road.

Hal stilled in body and mind as Jurgen grunted toward completion.

Unless she hadn’t been.

At Hal’s subtle urging, Jurgen was suddenly a little rougher, a little meaner, he slammed into her, and Beulah cried out in pain and begged and suddenly she wanted none of it. Suddenly it wasn’t her fault. And it wasn’t her memory. Hal licked his lips uncertainly, closing the door to his sister’s room carefully, watching tears fall down her face in the here and now.

“What happened, Bue?” he asked gently. Like he was born to it, he smoothed away her memory of his entry into her mind. All that was left was the memory he’d given her.

“Jurgen…” she whispered breathlessly. A thousand doors clamored for attention—memories of her time with Jurgen? Her love for him? With a deft hand, Hal calmed them all, just as he’d always done with his own. “Oh, Harry!” she cried, burying her face in his shoulder.

******

His father shot Jurgen Maatharsson, who proclaimed his innocence, and Beulah drowned herself as neatly as their Momma had that kitten, unable to live with what she thought he’d done to her. 

Hal might have been sad to see her dead, had he been another person, but the taste of her complete despair, the knowledge that he had stolen away a truth she couldn’t take to her grave, just made him want to know more. To know everything.

Meanwhile, her truth lived behind a door in Hal’s mind, in a room he’d built just for her.

Hal learned to pilfer more judiciously after that, but that first theft sparked a fire in the boy who had had none. He craved stories, truths, lives. And for whatever reason, he could have them. All he had to do was open a door.

And then one day, he met a man who had no doors. In a quiet town, a quiet old man had struck his fancy for some reason, but when he looked into the man’s mind it was… open. Dark. And completely inaccessible.

Lawrence Samson was the one person he couldn’t steal from. It made perfect sense, then, to throw in with the man. Power you couldn’t see into was power you needed to keep close.

Samson, for his part, cultivated Hal’s gift. He fed the hunger and need with so many interesting secrets—the man had people, subjects, chattel for Hal to feed from. He taught Hal that there was a flavor to each and every one of them, some tastier than others. Samson’s tastes ran toward dark and twisted things that Hal didn’t need to contemplate, and he was never allowed to open the doors of those people Lawrence used up and cast aside. And much as he longed to see what their burned and broken rooms held, he knew Samson could destroy him in an instant. Hal was too smart to throw his life away like that.

Besides, Hal had appetites of his own and he was given leave to indulge them. Sex was a special flavor—forbidden sex all the moreso, and he enjoyed both taking part and taking advantage. Guilt was another delicacy he sought out regularly. 

Some people, he used up. People who slept and died and never woke to tell of the small and ordinary man who walked through their minds. Others he merely sipped from, sliding into them and out again like a chance encounter with a hooker in a back alley; something to take the edge off. Every meal was a lesson. And another room in his mind. He didn’t always steal secrets away completely, of course. Often just knowing them was enough.

He’d opened many doors in the name Lawrence Samson, over the years. Hal collected secrets from politicians and doctors and scientists and military men. He pushed troop movements and laws. He spurred men to kill when necessary, to suicide when expedient. And all along, his house of secrets grew.

It was intoxicating.

“Next stop, Red River!” the train conductor called, shaking him from his contemplation of the countryside. “Next stop, Red River, New Mexico Territory!”

Four Corners was a long stagecoach ride from Red River, and Hal looked forward to the challenge of the little town and the puzzle that Ella Gaines had given him. She wanted Larabee—they’d all known that. Hal was almost certain the super man wouldn’t be there when he got there, unfortunately. He’d love to see into the mind of a man who couldn’t be killed. 

Not that killing was necessarily the be all and end all, right? There were other, more interesting, ways to end the life a man lived outside his head. Better ways than just a simple bullet or two. And Ella had made it clear that Hal could use any of them he chose. 

He closed his eyes and reviewed the sketches he’d been shown. Hal had never needed to keep anything as mundane as paper—the rooms in his mind were better places to safeguard things than a suitcase or a satchel. Each of the sketches in his head had its own room now, even the three Ella hadn’t wanted him to see.

Buck Wilmington had the first new room, dark but full of possibility. Then Nathan Jackson and the normals that Ella ignored and discounted. Hal was more than aware that normal minds had just as many secrets and tastes as exceptional ones. The preacher, Sanchez, had looked tired; the young boy, Dunne, had looked anything but. He’d investigate when he got there. See what he could see; what he could fill their rooms with before he ended their lives.

Next came the single normal she hadn’t shown him, the one he’d plucked from her mind when he’d distracted her by opening another door too loudly. He didn’t know who the man was, but she had a plan to have him picked up in Bakertown and killed.

Hal studied the strong features and laughing eyes Ella’s spy had drawn for the man. He hadn’t seen his whole name—only Standish. But Standish looked full of possibilities. Pity.

He smiled absently at the memory of Ella slamming that door in her head as if she could stop him. She fancied herself wise and seasoned, but the mind was his domain, and he knew every back door into hers. His room of her secrets—decades in the building—was twisted black, lit by candlelight and full up with pain and longing and fear of being abandoned. She’d be pleased to know that he had built Larabee’s room right beside it.

Far off at the top of his mind, fittingly, was the angel’s room, right where it had been since he’d first tasted the man years ago. Devin Tanner was a soul so shot full of power and joy and horror and optimism that Hal had been physically overwhelmed by it seven years ago, when he opened that simple door in the mind of what seemed nothing more than another chained prisoner. 

Most of Samson’s subjects were beaten by life before he’d gotten his claws into them, but Wings? He was something else entirely. What, Hal didn’t know, but he tasted of clouds and burial mounds and Hal knew he’d be returning to them soon. Ella’s desires didn’t enter into this and he’d told as much to Jepson.

His smile grew. Jepson had secrets of his own when it came to his precious Wings. Luckily, he was willing to pay well to keep them locked in that room in the dark. His newest pet was a little blind boy who absolutely reeked of determination and pain and Hal knew he’d be a prize well worth the price of relinquishing Tanner.

He wondered if Ella knew that he’d gone straight to Samson after speaking to her. Probably. The old man had told him to do her bidding, gather his payment and play with them as he pleased, and then ensure that she didn’t do anything stupid, like sacrifice Jepson’s “sparrow” as he called him, in her bid to capture Larabee’s heart.

It was a wise move on Samson’s part. Ella could be foolish in her obsession. She should have someone keeping an eye on her.

The train rolled into the station and Hal shuffled off with the rest of the crowd, heading toward the stage office to book his seat to Four Corners. The stage he was shown to was old, but large and comfy enough—God knew Hal had ridden in worse. The trip to the little town was long and as the miles rolled slowly by, Hal considered his fellow passengers. 

One was a silent, worried woman headed for Eagle’s Bend, just this side of Four Corners. She had a sister there who was having a child out of wedlock. The man who was fucking her was married to a richer woman and wouldn’t acknowledge the child. This woman planned to spirit her sister and her baby back to San Francisco.

The morose boy to his left was an orphan, not more than twelve years old, and every door in his mind was engulfed in flames, something Hal had never seen before. Hal leaned over to him with a smile. 

“Pretty boring, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. The boy shrugged and didn’t look up. 

Hal pushed open a door, watching the child twitch and rub his ear in response. Behind the door, the boy lay on the floor of a burning building, an unmoving lump that had been his mother aflame in the doorway beyond. Other doors brought his aunt in Bakertown—the relative he was bound for, and his father, who had killed his mother before the fire even started.

Hal grinned. At least  _ he _ wouldn’t be bored on the trip. And how providential that the child was heading to Bakertown, where Ella’s stray normal was...

******

Buck watched the stage come in from his usual spot in front of the saloon. He was trying not to fret over Chris and Vin, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the two of them were bound for trouble. He figured his worry was all because of what happened in Hillerton all those years ago.  

He didn’t blame Chris for sending Vin to him—didn’t blame Vin for needing to know—but every moment of that damn fiasco was torn up in his mind now; the Confederate colonel who’d stood before him as he was tied to a wagon wheel, announcing that each and every prisoner he had would be killed, one an hour, until Buck told them where the 54th regiment was headed next, the young corporal who’d died first and the one who’d died last…

“Excuse me, sir?”

Buck shook himself from the memory to see a bland-looking man, a little older than himself, standing before him, a satchel in his hand. Must have just come off the stage.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but could you tell me, please, where a good place to get a meal is?” He smiled placidly. “I’m just here for a day or two, on my way to San Francisco.”

Buck nodded. “Miss Greta’s place is good—next door to the mercantile.” He gestured to the saloon at his back. “Inez here makes some fine Mexican grub, if you go for that.”

The man smiled his thanks. “I appreciate it, sir,” he said simply. His smile turned strange. “I admit I’ve never eaten Mexican before, but you never know, do you, until you try something new?” 

Buck cocked his head as the strange little man walked into the building. “I reckon not,” he allowed absently.

“Mr. Wilmington!” Petey Markham ran up to him, a slip of yellow paper held out. “Telegram for Mr. Larabee. Mr. J said I could give it to you, though.”

Buck grinned at that and tipped the boy. Any telegram from the judge or one of the Seven seemed to be addressed to all of them, in Jensen’s eyes. Buck read the terse note with pursed lips. `Business concluded. Headed back via Bakertown. EPS`

Ezra. Damn it. Buck couldn’t be exactly sure what the hell was going on in that gambler’s mind, but he did know that Ezra and Chris hadn’t shared a bed in a while. Since Eli Joe came to town, probably. Buck’d been damn surprised when the two of them started in with each other a few months ago, but it had been a long time coming and he’d been happy for them both. 

Now, though, Ezra was scared, and hiding it behind a poker face and hasty retreats. The man was maddening to read and Buck had a mind to just corner him and demand that he get his head out of his ass and stop torturing himself and Chris both. 

He reckoned it had something to do with Chris’s state when they found him at the cabin that night. Nothing like seeing the man really injured to drive home the fact that Chris Larabee wasn’t normal. Buck’d had his own problem with that when he realized for the first time that Chris was twenty years older than him and would never look it. Sarah had confided in him once that it scared her that Chris would watch her grow old and die and probably wouldn’t do so himself for decades.

And then she died young anyway.

Damn it.

In a worse mood than he’d been in already, Buck walked off toward the boarding house, figuring he’d be better for a night in with a bottle of whiskey than a night out at a saloon full of pain and joy and other people’s problems.

Sometimes he wondered why the hell God had to go and make him so special, anyway.

*********

Hal grinned to himself as he walked into the saloon on the advice of Buck Wilmington. On his way in, he peered through the wide-open door into Buck Wilmington’s mind, glimpsing the battlefield and the wheel and the despair. The man was certainly suffering some sort of stress and worry. There were other doors standing slightly ajar, but it wasn’t the time now, was it?

Dermott, the young boy on the stagecoach, had been a wonderful diversion, but Hal  _ was _ hungry. 

“Hola, senor,” greeted the beautiful woman at the bar as he leaned against the well-worn wood. “What can I get you?”

He looked at her without looking into her and smiled. “What do you have?” he asked. “I’m  _ famished. _ ”

But then, wasn’t he always?

**********   
the end


End file.
